Psychological safety of a teacher in the conditions of digital transformation of science and education

Abstract

The article considers the issues of psychological safety of a teacher in the conditions of digital transformation of science and education. In the educational environment, the psychological security of a teacher's personality can be considered as a state of psychological social security, which ensures her professional and personal integrity as a subject of professional and pedagogical activity with the possibility of development and disclosure of resources in terms of information interaction with the social environment. The existing external circumstances caused by the digitalization of education can act as factors for reducing the psychological safety and professional confidence of a teacher in such positions as: the need to transfer, due to the requirements of information reality, previously acquired knowledge, skills, first of all, the skills of pedagogical work from a pre–digital environment to a digital one; mastering previously unused methods of conducting professional pedagogical activity; the experience of a teacher as a subject of work of new conditions of professional and pedagogical activity associated with the search for new meanings in work. The reduced level of psychological safety of teachers, due to the need to use digital technologies in professional and pedagogical activities, may be associated psychoemotionally with the presence in their own minds of some deterministic pedagogical fears: fear of information incompetence, fear of professional uselessness, fear of pedagogical failure. Difficulties of professional adaptation and psychological safety of teachers can be solved by mandatory professional development in such areas as possession of information and communication technologies, management of the adaptation process of students in the electronic information and educational environment of an educational organization, management and control of independent work of students in the information environment, etc. The use of digital educational practices and traditional models of pedagogical work mutually enrich the professional activity of a teacher and increase the psychological safety of the educational environment as a whole. The potential of psychological safety of a teacher can be considered as a key, systemic characteristic of a teacher's personality, ensuring the success and productivity of his activities, the actualization of his professional and personal resources for building a psychologically safe educational environment for education participants.